A cheater and those who defend him

I’ve been reading on the internet about global warming hijinks. If the theory of man-made global warming were such a self-obvious truth, the result of scientific consensus, then why do advocates for this idea keep committing frauds to advance it? We have another story that illustrates this.


Peter Gleick, founder of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Oakland, admitted that he committed fraud to obtain documents he thought would embarrass a conservative think tank that has been a leading debunker of some of the overheated (get it?) claims of the climate-change Chicken Littles.


The memos, which reveal the group’s political and fund-raising strategies, didn’t turn out to embarrass the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, but it has damaged the reputation of a respected man, who now takes a leave of absence from the institute, faces public embarrassment and possible prosecution.


What’s more amazing to me is the reaction of the press to this story, according to The Wall Street Journal. A Los Angeles Times columnist, Michael Hiltzik, defended him: “It’s a sign of the emotions wrapped up in the global warming debate that Gleick should be apologizing for his actions today while the Heartland Institute stakes out the moral high ground.” Others echoed this:“Peter Gleick lied, but was it justified by the wider good?” asked James Garvey of the British Guardian newspaper. He compared Gleick’s action to that of a man who lied to keep his friend from driving home drunk. “What Heartland is doing is harmful, because it gets in the way of public consensus and action,” he argued. “If his lie has good effects overall—if those who take Heartland’s money to push skepticism are dismissed as shills, if donors pull funding after being exposed in the press—then perhaps on balance he did the right thing. … It depends on how this plays out.” Think about what he just said: Heartland was standing in the way of steamrolling the public into an ill-conceived decision on climate change, so it was OK to destroy the organization. Why not cheat, as long as it “has good effects”?


So that’s where we are in this debate. One side says it’s OK to cheat because the issue is so important and their side is correct. That’s a lot of nerve.